CoudreMODE » Technology

A Great Sewing Tool – Yardage Calc for iPhone/iTouch

coudremode — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:25:24 +0000

Click for a Closer View

A few months ago I was on Pattern Review and noted on an iPhone/iTouch thread that the available sewing related apps applied only to quilting. I was surprised that someone hadn’t written an app that recalculates yardages for garment patterns. Well, this morning I got an email from an iPhone developer named Mark Guleno who has written just such an app! Its called Yardage Calc and it recalculates from one yardage to another based on the fabric width. There is also a conversion function for metric. The screen shot explains it perfectly. So I went over to the iTunes App Store and downloaded it this morning; it works just great!

Be Sun Safe!

coudremode — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:18:40 +0000

In good weather I like to spend the day outside gardening; BUT I’m pretty sun sensitive and I never tan, my skin goes straight to a painful sunburn. I also loathe the way sunscreen feels on my skin. So I’d rather cover up. Last year I found the perfect gardening hat, now I wanted a tunic from a sun protective fabric.

There are plenty of web sites selling sun-protective clothing, but I gotta tell ‘ya, the styles out there on sites like Coolibar and Solumbra are just heinous and/or ridiculously expensive. $89 for a simple shirt? Okay that fabric is nice but still. This one is more basic and its a mere $79. Rilly. My credit card choked and refused to leave my wallet. So in the end I had to make my own, and this is when I find sewing to be the most satisfying: I see something I want that is not readily available and I can make one that is just, or more, attractive as what I see in RTW.

The Patrones pattern on the right met my criteria:

Didn’t want a garment that goes over my head

Had to have enough ease for mobility while gardening and had to have style because if I need to run to Lowes I don’t want to look like I’m on a work release highway crew.

I wanted sleeves with tabs so they would stay rolled up.

Had to be a sun protective fabric that breathes on a hot day. There is nothing worse than a clammy t-shirt in humid weather!

The Patrones pattern had the basic style, so I added side slits, roll-up tabs for the sleeves and replaced the ties with button loops. Over the years my mother has given me a ton of cool vintage sewing stuff including a collection of snaps and eyelets. I dug out these pearl button snaps with a silver rim and I think they’re just great. The fabric is Solarweave, a nylon supplex sun protective fabric with an SPF of 50+. This is a size 40 and I added an inch of addtional ease in the hip area.

We’ll be in Florida this July (both DD’s are in a national dance competition, otherwise I’d rather be there in February!) so I think I’ll get some use from this tunic down there as well; I can see myself wearing this on the beach in lieu of a bathing suit. I also have this fabric in a bright yellow and I may make cropped gardening pants. I know I won’t be cool by South Florida fashion standards (Gigi, don’t hold it it against me!) but my skin just can’t take the sun, y’know?

And now that I see how my hat is made, I can make a second one from the remnants, which is evidently the same fabric now that I have it in hand.

Kewl

McCall’s 5525 – Solved Technical Difficulties of a Different Sort

coudremode — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Left: Bernina foot, 20mm wide. Right: Willcox & Gibbs foot, 8mm wide

When Ann gave me this Willcox & Gibbs industrial it came with some good stuff; there were several needles (industrial machine needles are different from home machine needles) a spare belt (no servos here its belt driven), a few rather scary looking watch-those-fingers feet (see right, the regular one is just 8mm wide), a special wrench and the thread stand. However, one crucial thing missing was a manual, and as every sewer knows a used sewing machine needs its manual as much as a used car does. And one thing I could not seem to figure out with this old beauty was how to change the stitch length.

It had been set at 8 stitches per inch when I got it and for the life of me I could not get it to reset. Now mind you, this is not a complicated machine, its entirely mechanical; it does only a lockstitch and can’t even go in reverse. It really has no external features other than a small box built into the front for oil and a silver button below a tiny window that notes the stitch lengths per inch. So how hard could it be to change the stitch length? Well, without a manual for guidance it really was like looking for a needle in a haystack. First I tried to figure it out on my own and got nowhere. Then I called the guys at Reliable Sewing Machine who serviced it; Bill read me the stitch length instructions over the phone but it made no sense at all. Then I called Ann, thinking I could ask her for the number of the woman who gave her the machine, but she called me back and said, “Phyl, I wish I could but she’s dead!” So much for that idea.

Finally I get on the Internet, start googling and up comes 301,000 hits for Willcox & Gibbs. I learned a lot. The company was in business from 1857 to 1973 as a sewing machine manufacturer. They had several showrooms in the US and Europe, in Boston they were at 363 Boylston Street, a tony address even today. In 1973 they sold the sewing machine business to Pfaff; but they still exist as Rexel Inc. a company that distributes lighting and electrical components. Most of what I found for information about their sewing machines pertained to their highly collectible Victorian era machines or were links to used sergers from the 70′s that are still sold in the secondary market. Finally, after trolling through 7 pages of hits I found a promising PDF from a Smithsonian on-line collection of industrial trade literature. There was quite a bit of Willcox & Gibbs material and one file was labeled “Manual for high speed industrial lockstitch machine”. I opened up the PDF and sure enough the machine looks like a simpler version of my industrial! And its almost identical too, the only thing it doesn’t have is the auto-lubricating box on the front. Here is the instruction for changing the stitch length:

The silver reset button and the window with the stitch length number are to the left of the wheel. The box below holds oil.

“TO CHANGE THE STITCH – Turn Hand Wheel and press Button until it snaps in. Then for a shorter stitch (higher number) turn top of Hand Wheel toward you; for a longer stitch (lower number) turn it from you until in either case the sititch number desired is shown in recess above. Then release Button.”

Did you get all that? There is a pop quiz at the end…

After two tries and much grunting I figured it out. There is a indeed a “Button”, there is a indeed a “recess” and the wheel did turn and the stitch length number did change. Then I ran some fabric through – viola – 34 stitches per inch! I learned a few other things too; my machine is mucholder than I thought, the Smithsonian manual is dated 1928 so that makes it approximately 81 years old. It runs at 4200 stitches per minute; my 2002 Bernina 180 does 880 per minute. The table and the motor are newer than the head; the motor is General Electric, the transmitter is Consew and the table is labeled Singer on the treadle. But it still works. The only strange thing about it is the smell; when it heats up my sewing room fills with the odor of old sewing machine oil.

So I can finish up my coat now; although the buttonholes will need to wait until my Bernina comes back from the shop.

Your Closet at Your Fingertips

coudremode — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:33:04 +0000

Linda Grant at The Thoughtful Dresser blogged about this today and I literally went to the iTunes store at 6:30 this morning to buy this app! This is the best $2.99 I’ve ever spent. Touch Closet is an iPhone/iTouch app that organizes your closet and lets you put together outfits for future reference. And I think this will come in handy for fabric shopping too because I can look at my accessories while I’m shopping on-line; I can also use it to really plan my sewing projects because I can put together outfits of, say, a fabric swatch, a photo or technical drawing from the pattern company web site, shoes, bags and jewelery. It’s easy to sync photos of your sewing project photos to the device and I’ve also sync’d saved photos of items I bought on-line. This is so cool.

True Colors: Don’t Trust That Monitor

coudremode — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:57:17 +0000

Last week I bought a Pantone Color Guide and it’s amazing how useful it is. Savvy fabric websites like Emma One Sock and Gorgeous Fabrics already use Pantone color numbers in their fabric descriptions, and I hope this becomes a standard for all fabric and sewing trim websites (are you listening, M&J Trim and Fabric.com?) I love on-line fabric shopping, but frankly, for fabric selection you should not trust the colors displayed on your monitor, especially for reds and blues, which have a huge range of color, saturation and hue. It’s so much easier to be confident of a color when you can look it up in your Pantone Guide to really get an accurate sense of what it looks like. The Pantone Shopping Color Guide ($19.95) is the version you want, other Pantone color decks are pricey ($100+) and are really intended for design professionals. Once caveat: Pantone seems to hide this on their web site, and will ship it only within the US and Canada. Els asked me to get one for her, and the shipping to Europe ended up being more than a third of the price, so I suspect that’s why this is a US/Canada only item on the US Pantone web site. Pantone’s color system is a global standard however, I googled “Pantone UK” and “Pantone Germany” and got web sites for each, so with some perseverance you might find this outside the US.

Fashion At Your Fingertips

coudremode — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:37:43 +0000

My husband gave me an Apple iTouch for Christmas, and its wicked cool; basically its an iPhone with Internet connectivity but no phone function. The iTunes App Store has hundreds of free apps, and fashion designers are starting to upload free iTouch apps that showcase their latest collections. Both Chanel and Ralph Lauren are available, and Style.com has a condensed version of their web site that is really terrific.

Chanel’s iTouch app showcases just one collection, Paris-Moscow 2008/09, and for students of Chanel its pretty interesting. Lagerfeld has gone back to Mademoiselle’s Russian period from early 1920′s and gives us beautiful folkwear embellishment on dresses, tunics and coats. The tall beaded headpieces worn by the models will remind you of something you’d see on a Chiparus bronze and they are still amazing even though no modern woman would ever wear them. There is also a WiFi connection for “Chanel News”; the next time I’m in a hotspot I’ll have to see if that will work. A moody video of this collection rounds out this app, and even though there is not much content compared to Style.com I like seeing the Chanel logo on my device, it will tide me over until I actually own something that is authentically Chanel!

The Style.com app is really robust, and I actually prefer the iTouch version over their website because I can look at runway shows from a comfy chair instead of sitting at a desk in front of my PC , using the iTouch feels more like reading a fashion magazine This app had tons of fun features; the runway videos in particular are great. Alas, there is no zoom feature and no detail shots, but all of the designers from the Style.com web site are represented. I’ll definitely be going back to download the latest version of this app after Fashion Week.

Fashion Follows Form

coudremode — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:34:26 +0000

TLo over on Project RunGay did a post recently about Ralph Lauren’s design for the US Olympic Team. Just my opinion here, but how many ways can you spell b-o-r-i-n-g?

Honestly, those outfits made elite athletes look like trust fund schmoes straight from the Ryder Cup circa 1930. Ascots? Striped rep ties? Blazers? With that dopey crest on the front? White golf caps? In 2008? ?

The true fashion statement of this Olympics is the Speedo LZR Racer, designed with input from Comme des Garcons.

This is one stunningly beautiful piece of performance clothing; the fabric is a proprietary textile that actually reduces drag on the swimmers body by minimizing skin vibration and muscle oscillation. The seams are not sewn but bonded by a micro-laser and the suit also has an inner core stabilzer that supports the body in key areas to help maintin a proper body position in the water. Just watch the underwater footage of Michael Phelps – no drag, no turbulence, sleek as a shark. AND its great fashion.